Miss Brewster.'
The young woman gave him a curious side-look, but did not answer. She gathered the wraps she had taken from her cabin, and, handing them to him before he had thought of offering to take them, she led the way to the deck. He found their chairs side by side, and admired the intelligence of the deck-steward, who seemed to understand which chairs to place together. Miss Jennie sank gracefully into her own, and allowed him to adjust the wraps around her.
'There,' she said, 'that's very nicely done; as well as the deck-steward himself could do it, and I am sure it is impossible to pay you a more graceful compliment than that. So few men know how to arrange one comfortably in a steamer chair.'
'You speak as though you had vast experience in steamer life, and yet you told me this was your first voyage.'
'It is. But it doesn't take a woman more than a day to see that the average man attends to such little niceties very clumsily. Now just tuck in the corner out of sight. There! Thank you, ever so much. And would you be kind enough to—Yes, that's better. And this other wrap so. Oh, that is perfect. What a patient man you are, Mr. Wentworth!'
'Yes, Miss Brewster. You are a foreigner. I can see that now. Your professed compliment was hollow. You said I did it perfectly, and then immediately directed me how to do it.'
'Nothing of the kind. You did it well, and I think you ought not to grudge me the pleasure of adding my own little improvements.'
'Oh, if you put it in that way, I will not. Now, before I sit down, tell me what book I can get that will interest you. The library contains a very good assortment.'
'I don't think I care about reading. Sit down and talk. I suppose I am too indolent to-day. I thought, when I came on board, that I would do a lot of reading, but I believe the sea-air makes one lazy. I must confess I feel entirely indifferent to mental improvement.'
'You evidently do not think my conversation will be at all worth listening to.'
'How quick you are to pervert my meaning! Don't you see that I think your conversation better worth listening to than the most interesting or improving book you can choose from the library? Really, in trying to avoid giving you cause for making such a remark, I have apparently stumbled into a worse error. I was just going to say I would like your conversation much better than a book, when I thought you would take that as a reflection on your reading. If you take me up so sharply I will sit here and say nothing. Now then, talk!'
'What shall I say?'
'Oh, if I told you what to say I should be doing the talking. Tell me about yourself. What do you do in London?'
'I work hard. I am an accountant.'
'And what is an accountant? What does he do? Keep accounts?'
'Some of them do; I do not. I see, rather, that accounts which other people keep have been correctly kept.'
'Aren't they always correctly kept? I thought that was what book-keepers were hired for.'
'If books were always correctly kept there would be little for us to do; but it happens, unfortunately for some, but fortunately for us, that people occasionally do not keep their accounts accurately.'
'And can you always find that out if you examine the books?'
'Always.'
'Can't a man make up his accounts so that no one can tell there is anything wrong?'
'The belief that such a thing can be done has placed many a poor wretch in prison. It has been tried often enough.'
'I am sure they can do it in the States. I have read of it being done and continued for years. Men have made off with great sums of money by falsifying the books, and no one found it out until the one who did it died or ran away.'
'Nevertheless, if an expert accountant had been called in, he would have found out very soon that something was wrong, and just where the wrong was, and how much.'
'I didn't think such cleverness possible. Have you ever discovered anything like that?'
'I have.'
'What is done when such a thing is discovered?'
'That depends upon circumstances. Usually a policeman is called in.'
'Why, it's like being a detective. I wish you would tell me about some of the cases you have had. Don't make me ask so many questions. Talk.'
'I don't think my experiences would interest you in the least. There was one case with which I had something to do in London, two years ago, that——'
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